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For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.”  Romans 1:17  NASB 1995

Is revealed – Paul has this tendency to write run-on Greek sentences.  In fact, the opening of Ephesians is one long sentence which we break up into many verses.  It’s good to remember this when we try to interpret what Paul is saying.  His thoughts aren’t simple logical steps.  They’re complex and organic, one thing leading automatically to another.  That’s the case here, and in order to understand what he’s saying, we need to be sure we connect each statement with the preceding ones.

To begin with, we need to notice “for in it.”  In what?  The answer lies in the previous verse (which, by the way, reaches all the way back to the first verse).  For in the gospel, that is, in the good news of God.  You might think that this is the announcement of salvation in Jesus, as most evangelicals would, but this is not the case.  The gospel of God is not the good news of Jesus.  It’s the good news that God cares about the condition and fate of human beings.  Remember that Paul is writing to both Jews and Gentiles in a Jewish assembly in Rome.  For the Gentiles, this good news means they are no longer under the domination of pagan deities who threaten men with reprisals.  For the Jews it means that the Torah they have always embraced reaches beyond their ethnic community and includes those outside, inviting them to experience the ḥesed of God.  What is revealed is captured in the Greek word dikaiosýnē, placed first in the phrase in order to emphasizes its importance.  What is dikaiosýnē?  Ah, that’s the crux of the matter.  It’s worth exploring this term in depth.

This concept influenced all social relationships so strongly that it affected theological reflection on the fellowship between God and man. Law is the basis of the OT view of God, and the religious use of legal concepts helps in turn to ethicize the law. Many terms are used to express the relations between God and man, and the conduct governed by these relations.

1. 1. The richness of the Hebrew usage is well expressed by the díkē group, especially dikaiosýnē and díkaios.^[1]
   2. It is a basic tenet in the OT that God posits law and is bound to it. Recognition of this is a unifying factor in Israel’s faith. All law comes from God, and hence God’s authority extends to all Israel’s historical relationships. God’s law is an order of life that cannot be changed or challenged. It is righteous because he is righteous. His ways are right; they thus give us life and security. He is a righteous ruler and judge, as shown already in the victory celebrated in Judg. 5:11. His righteousness extends to other nations, so that order is seen in the world. The righteous can thus appeal to him with confidence when they are the victims of hostility and oppression (Ps. 5:8).^[2]
   3. God’s righteousness is not just static but dynamic. He establishes as righteous those who seek his righteousness. The righteous, then, are those who show fidelity to God’s command (Hab 2:4) and whom God vindicates against their enemies. This vindication may not be synonymous with success. Misfortunes suggest at times that God’s judgment means condemnation. Refuge must then be sought in God. But even from this place of refuge a sense of right may be discerned in God (Ps. 62:7ff.). The torment of doubting God’s righteousness constitutes the grief of Job. We have to be able to take God’s right for granted in his dealings with us, even if it must sometimes be projected into a higher sphere than that of human understanding.[3]

“For in it (the gospel) a righteousness from God is revealed.”  It’s worth noting that there is no definite article in Greek (as there is in the NASB translation) and, furthermore, the preposition, ĕk can be translated as either “from” or “of.”  God’s good news is all about His dikaiosýnē, and for Paul, a Jewish orthodox rabbi, this must include the revelation of Torah at Sinai.  That hasn’t changed.  What has changed is that the Messiah has come, and with him the latest understanding of God’s dikaiosýnē.

The Greek verb “revealed” is apokalýptō.  This is present tense passive—an on-going process received by us, not initiated by us.  Notice that “is revealed” implies something new.  “The new factor is that the God of Israel is the living God (Josh. 3:10; Is. 37:4; Dt. 5:23) in distinction from dead idols.”^[4]  This is not a renunciation of the Old Testament Torah.  There is something entirely new here as far as the Gentile audience is concerned—a new way of understanding God making the world right.  We also see that the motive power is God’s.  This is not something that Man can do or find out.  God has to “uncover” it (the meaning of apokalýptō).

Now we have the phrase, “from faith to faith.”  It is literally “out of faith into faith”.  The prepositions are ĕk and eis.  This has been variously translated as “faith first and last” or “faith through and through.”  But there may be something here that is tied to the use of the prepositions.  John uses the preposition eis to convey the idea that believing is in a sense being transported from one world to another.  We are moved from this world into God’s world.  That is why it is simply impossible to continue to live in the old world and claim to belong to God’s new redeemed world.  You cannot live with part of your body in Chicago and the rest in New York.  You are either ­in Chicago or you are in New York.

Both ĕk and eis have their primary sense in the idea of motion.  ĕk is a preposition that primarily means “out of.”  So, Paul is saying that there is a movement here, out of faith and into faith.  What does this mean?  Does he mean we are moving out of the Jewish way of life into a new, “Christian” way of life, as evangelicals normally read this verse?  As an orthodox Jew, such thoughts would be inconceivable.  We do not leave Sinai behind.  We deepen our understanding and discover the inclusiveness of Sinai.  What Paul means is the revealed faith found in the prophets before the Messiah and the revealed faith found in this later time after the Messiah is still the same faith, but with a new revelation (a new perspective).  We have a new rabbi to interpret Moses.

“even as it has been written” – here the critical word is “even as.”  It is kathōs.  It’s a word of causal explanation, sometimes translated “just as.”  We see the importance when we realize that Paul is now using a prophet to support his claim that the righteousness of God is revealed out of faith into faith.  The fact that he quotes a prophet shows that he argues for a continuous and identical righteousness.  It is the revelation that has changed, not the message.  The message is from Habakkuk:

הִנֵּה עֻפְּלָה לֹא-יָשְׁרָה נַפְשׁוֹ בּוֹ וְצַדִּיק בֶּאֱמוּנָתוֹ יִחְיֶה

Now we need to know how to translate this Hebrew verse, especially the last part of the verse.

Notice that “the just shall live by faith” [  וְצַדִּיק בֶּאֱמוּנָתוֹ יִחְיֶה ] (the usual way of translating this quotation) should probably be rendered “the one who by faith is just shall live.”  To see how we come to this conclusion, you’ll need to review examinations of this verse.  Here they are:

https://skipmoen.com/2016/08/opposites/

https://skipmoen.com/2012/12/grammatical-theology/

https://skipmoen.com/2014/09/small-additions-2/

https://skipmoen.com/2012/05/pauls-summation-1/

https://skipmoen.com/2012/05/pauls-summation-3/

https://skipmoen.com/2012/05/pauls-summation-4/

In summary, there are three reasons to accept this change.  First, Paul is talking about trusting God as a way of life and the results of that trust.  He’s not talking how we live but rather about what happens when we live in a certain way.  Second, if we look at chapters 1 to 4, we find words about faith 25 times and words about human behavior (i.e., what being alive looks like in this paradigm) only 2 times, but in chapters 5 to 8, we find words about human behavior 25 times and words about faith only twice.  Clearly, Paul is interested in “faith” as the subject of the first part of his letter.  He wants to establish the basis of trust (“faith” in Hebrew) before he moves on to what that looks like in practice.  Third, the whole teaching of Romans is to connect dikaiosýnē with action, that is, our trust in God with obedience to God.  The Mosaic code is never out of the picture.  Paul suggests that the paradigm shift that connects us with the applied instructions God gave Moses (and interpreted by the Messiah) is the response to God’s gift and as a byproduct, we experience real life, not just animated being.

Topical Index:  righteousness, faith, dikaiosýnē, revealed, apokalýptō, Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 1:17

^[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 168). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.

^[2] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 168). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.

[3] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 169). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.

^[4] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 408). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.